August 25, 2007

Earlier this week, U.S. President George W. Bush, Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexico’s President Felipe Calderón met to plan further integration of their three economies. Thousands of people protest these summit meetings, not because they oppose international cooperation but because they reject policies that benefit the rich and powerful at the expense of everyone else.

Globalization could benefit us all. Telerad is a Singapore-based corporation that analyzes X-rays and medical scans for hospitals around the world. Currently, it can take weeks to get results from a CAT scan or an MRI. Telerad promises that an image from New York can be analyzed and a report returned in less than half an hour.

This looks like a win-win situation — improving the ability to provide timely treatment at a lower cost — until you consider that higher-priced American labor is being exchanged for lower-priced Asian labor.

Globalization is being structured like automation was, to make the rich richer. By 2000, U.S. workers took half the time to produce all the goods and services they produced in 1973. If the benefits of this rise in productivity had been shared, most Americans could be enjoying a four-hour work day, or a six-month work year, or they could be taking off every other year from work with no loss of pay.

Needless to say, this is not the case. All the benefits of automation went to the capitalist class. By 2000, the average American worker was putting in 199 more hours on the job, five weeks more than in 1973.

Ordinary folks are working harder and longer so the capitalist class can haul in the dough. In the mid-1970’s, average executive compensation was 35 times the average wage. By 1999, the average CEO of a major US corporation was taking home 330 times the average wage and 476 times the average blue-collar wage. By 2004, the portion of the economy going home with workers dropped to the lowest level ever recorded.

Governments and corporations are shaping globalization the same way they shaped automation, to boost profits at workers’ expense.

Divide and profit

Cathleen Wedlake has worked in the newspaper trade for 38 years. She and 30 of her co-workers were laid off when the San Jose Mercury News outsourced their jobs to Asia via Express KCS, an India-based corporation that provides production services for more than 40 newspapers in northern California.

National borders exist to maximize profits. Jobs are allowed to migrate to cheaper locations, while the people who work those jobs are blocked from moving to higher-paying locations.

The same year that the U.S. and Mexico launched their free-trade agreement (NAFTA), the Clinton administration launched Operation Gatekeeper to block Mexican workers from entering the U.S. Both moves served the interests of capitalists on both sides of the border.

American goods entering Mexico put small Mexican producers out of business, creating a more desperate (and therefore cheaper) workforce for larger Mexican employers and an illegal (and therefore desperate and cheaper) workforce for American employers.

The solution to these problems is generally posed as a choice between free trade and protectionism. However, both of these policies benefit the capitalist class. Protectionist polices shield weaker industries from global competition, while free-trade policies enable stronger industries to penetrate foreign markets.

The American union movement has traditionally sided with the protectionist wing of capitalism. This strategy has failed to save jobs, as thousands of laid-off steel and autoworkers can attest. Furthermore, it has hamstrung the labor movement by pitting American workers against their counter-parts in other lands.

A more effective strategy would be to demand an end to national borders and for workers to defend their jobs as if these borders did not exist.

Wedlake and her co-workers at the San Jose Mercury News face the same challenge as any workforce threatened with replacement by lower-paid workers. The low-paid workers must be incorporated into the union and paid exactly the same. This is not a free-trade stance, but a pro-worker antidote to the divide-and-profit polices of employers.

While they promote free trade, not a single head of state supports opening borders to workers. On the contrary, capitalists go berserk at the thought of abolishing national boundaries because their system can function only by dividing workers and trapping them in low-waged areas. Of course, they would never admit to such selfish motives. Instead, they warn that open borders would cause a flood of impoverished people to drown America. This is absurd.

If the benefits of global integration were shared, people would have no economic reason to move.

Globalization has deepened the conflict over which class will shape the future. The capitalist class is planning more miseries for the majority. The alternative is for workers in North and South America, Europe, Asia and Africa to come together as one workforce to demand equal pay for equal work. We would then have the collective power to dispense with the master class and run the world for ourselves and each other, raising living standards for everyone.

August 18, 2007

I attended a lecture by Dr Helen Caldicott, whose mission is to educate the public about the dangers of nuclear power. As Caldicott neared the end of her speech, a young woman cried out in terror, "We’re all going to die! We’re all going to die!" as her friends led her from the lecture hall.

Facts can anger people into action and also shock them into despair and dissociation.

The knowledge that they are harming themselves does not empower most people; it provides them with further evidence of their powerlessness.

The shock-them-into-change strategy doesn’t work in medicine. Yet social and political activists continue to embrace it as their strategy of choice. When telling people how bad things are proves ineffective, the shock factor is jacked up as if yelling louder will make the difference. When that fails, pessimism generally follows and the bulk of humanity is wrongly dismissed as stupid or uncaring.

In fact, most people know what’s going on in the world. They may not know all the details but they know the basics — that the world is run for the rich and powerful at the expense of everyone else. Most Americans know that Washington invaded Iraq on false pretenses and they want the war to end. Nevertheless, the president remains in office, and the war continues.

If the truth could set us free, we would be free by now. However, as Noam Chomsky and others have pointed out, society is structured to keep most people feeling powerless most of the time, regardless of what they know.

How does change happen?

Many researchers have investigated the factors that change human behavior in medicine, in prisons and in the workplace. Regardless of the setting, three elements are consistently identified, which are most effective when combined. I have applied them to the problem of social change.

Social support. People need support from others to overcome feelings of powerlessness, to create strategies for change and to act on them. In the context of supportive relationships, we learn that we are neither crazy nor powerless. By pulling together, we give each other hope and strength.

To find out how organization counteracts powerlessness, psychologists at the University of Sussex interviewed participants in "traditional marches, fox-hunt sabotages, anti-capitalist street parties, environmental direct actions, and industrial mass pickets." The factors that contributed to a heightened sense of power included: being part of something bigger than yourself; increased hope of change; and a sense of unity and mutual support within the group.

Solidarity is a powerful antidote to pessimism. Activists reported a deep sense of happiness while involved in collective protests. Simply recalling their experiences caused them to smile. The researchers concluded that "people should get more involved in campaigns, struggles and social movements, not only in the wider interest of social change, but also for their own personal good."

Presenting problems as solvable. To change their behavior, people need to see themselves and the world differently, in ways that make change seem possible. For example, explaining how the attack on immigrants is part of a divide-and-rule strategy to raise profits highlights the power of the capitalist class. In contrast, explaining that a divide-and-rule strategy is necessary because capitalists could never rule a united working class highlights the power of ordinary people. The facts are the same but the feeling is more hopeful, and feelings motivate actions.

Howard Zinn is so widely loved because he believes in us and invites us to believe in ourselves and each other. The title of his latest book, A Power Governments Cannot Suppress, says it all. Michael Moore’s film, Sicko, has made a huge impact, not only because it reveals the horrors of the American medical system, but because it shows them to be neither necessary nor inevitable.

Repetition. When the level of struggle is high, people seem to change overnight in a kind of explosive chain reaction. At all other times, the dominant ideas are those that maintain the status quo. Changing those ideas requires patient and repeated encouragement. It’s like boiling water.

You put the kettle on the stove and turn up the heat, but nothing seems to happen. Do you remove the kettle in disgust at the failure of heat to boil water? Of course not! We know that heat increases the speed of water molecules, a process that we cannot see directly. When enough heat has been applied and the molecules are moving fast enough, a change of state will occur — liquid transforms into gas.

Boiling water is a predictable, mechanical process. Changing people is more complicated because we cannot predict when a change of mind will occur. Nor can we know all the factors that will be required for that transformation. We must have patience. Just because nothing seems to be happening doesn’t mean that people aren’t boiling under the surface.

The bottom line is that shocking people with facts can deepen feelings of powerlessness. To counter pessimism and passivity, we must apply the science of social change. We need to build activist organizations that can raise people’s confidence that this is not the world we deserve but the one we have inherited and are collectively responsible for changing.

August 11, 2007

When you hear the phrase "domestic violence" or "spouse abuse," you probably picture a man assaulting a woman. During the 1970s, the women’s liberation movement drew needed attention to domestic violence. However, the feminist wing of the movement attributed the problem to "male power." As a result, violence perpetrated by women is typically dismissed as self-defense and the fact that women are more likely to maltreat and abuse children is swept under the carpet.

While there is more awareness of female-perpetrated violence today, it continues to be under-estimated. Women are more likely to report spousal violence than men who are ashamed to admit they were assaulted by women. The belief that males are naturally more violent has caused most research to examine male perpetrators and female victims. Most studies do not distinguish between minor assaults, perpetrated by both men and women, and serious assaults that are more commonly perpetrated by men. These factors combine to give the mistaken impression that domestic violence is always serious, if not life-threatening, and that women attack men only in self-defense.

In reality, domestic violence does not result from any "battle of the sexes" because same-sex relationships are equally afflicted. Men in relationships with men are battered as often as women in relationships with men. And between 17 and 45 percent of lesbians report being the victim of at least one act of physical violence perpetrated by a female partner.

I have provided medical treatment for battered women, abused men, and adults of both sexes who were maltreated in childhood by mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters. It doesn’t help to argue whether men or women are more responsible for domestic violence. All victims deserve support, and all perpetrators need treatment. The overriding need is to eliminate the social roots of family violence.

Stress and shame drive interpersonal violence. Stress escalates when people feel trapped in relationships they would rather leave. Women’s low pay keeps them financially dependent on men, especially when they have children. The State insists that men support women and children regardless of their ability to do so. People who feel trapped are more likely to attack one another. Not surprisingly, domestic violence increases as income levels fall.

Shame is the intensely painful feeling of believing one’s self to be unworthy or unacceptable, a loser. The primary source of shame is the social hierarchy that divides people into a few winners and many more losers. The lower down the pyramid you stand, the harder it is to feel good about yourself.

Intolerable shame transforms into rage that can be directed at one’s self or someone else. Rage and shame can re-enforce each other in a downward spiral of violence.

Powerlessness corrupts

Those most likely to injure their partners are not the ones who feel most powerful, but the ones who feel most powerless. Abusive men are more likely to feel like failures, to be unemployed or intermittently employed and to have less than high-school education. Their desire for complete control over the partner is directly related to their sense of unworthiness and fear of loss.

On the surface, wife-battering looks like a display of male power. In reality, most men who batter feel extremely dependent and deeply ashamed of their dependence. Female batterers experience the same inner conflict.

A "battering cycle" can result when shame at feeling unworthy builds to an explosion of rage that drives the partner away. The terror of being abandoned leads to acts of contrition to draw the partner back. The return of the partner revives the fear of being rejected, and anger builds again. These people are at their partners’ throats one minute and at their knees the next.

Men are most likely to murder their partners when they feel least powerful, when the partner leaves or threatens to leave. Those who kill their partners often kill themselves at the same time. Such tragedies do not result from male power but from powerless rage.

Capitalism creates an impossible bind for both sexes. Because meeting human needs would cut into profits, people are deprived of what they need and then shamed for feeling needy. The more difficult life becomes, the more we expect love to compensate us. Of course, it cannot. As needs go unmet, resentment builds, and we punish our loved ones for failing us, as fail they must.

By putting profits before people, capitalism transforms our most intimate relationships into a battleground. We must stop fighting each other and start pulling together to demand what we all need and deserve.

August 03, 2007

Relationship conflicts are a universal source of pain and confusion. I frequently counsel couples in distress where the woman is angry and the man is depressed. The woman cannot understand why the man won’t fix the problems in the relationship. The man feels inadequate. Nothing he does is good enough. The woman cannot understand how any man could feel inadequate, because men are supposed to be superior beings. In her mind, he has simply stopped caring about her.

The vulnerability of men is one of society’s best-kept secrets. Men are expected to provide and protect and solve all problems. They aren’t supposed to feel needy, vulnerable or inadequate like women. Yet, in some ways, men are more vulnerable than women.

As early as five years of age, males are more likely than females to kill themselves. This difference increases through life. By age 22, men are six times more likely and by age 85 fifteen times more likely to kill themselves. When a relationship breaks up, the man is 11 times more likely than the woman to commit suicide.

Capitalism demands that men be tough to compete and endure hardship, while denying them the emotional support necessary for genuine inner strength.

To "toughen" males, society directs an astonishing level of violence against them. The most sensitive parts of their bodies are singled out for attack. Parents are pressured to circumcise infant sons in the first week of life, a traumatic procedure that is commonly performed without anesthetic. The same surgery done on female infants (removing the skin around the clitoris) is illegal in North America and generally condemned as cruel and mutilating.

More than 13 percent of boys have experienced assaults directed at their genitals, and 10 percent of boys have been kicked in the groin before junior high school. Boys subjected to physical violence are prohibited from expressing pain. In films, a man being kicked in the groin is typically presented as comical, despite the excruciating pain of such trauma.

Laughing at someone’s pain is a sign of dissociation, and both girls and boys learn to deny male vulnerability from an early age. One woman found herself laughing while reading a description of a woman battering her husband until she realized that, if the roles were reversed, she would be "screaming bloody murder."

Sexist stereotypes depict real men as strong and powerful, not victims. To be a victim is to be without power, like a woman, and the most important thing for a man is to not be a woman.

Taunts like "Don’t be a cry-baby" and "Don’t be a girl" shame boys for feeling scared or hurt. The expectation that even very young boys should be tough causes them to be separated from their mothers much earlier than girls. While sons need their fathers’ affection, fathers consider it their duty to toughen their sons to help them succeed in life. Fathers have learned to suppress their emotions, and they expect their sons to do the same.

While men are discouraged from expressing "women’s" emotions (hurt, need, fear), anger is seen as a manly emotion because of its power. Consequently, boys learn to respond with anger, even rage, when they feel vulnerable or detect vulnerability in other males. Homophobic bullying is a common way for boys and men to bolster their masculine identity.

During school initiation rituals, violence against male students is condoned as "character building." At Columbine High School, site of the 1999 shooting massacre, sports initiation rituals included senior wrestlers twisting the nipples of newcomers until they turned purple and older tennis players slamming hard volleys into the backsides of younger ones.

Sports train young men to hurt others, and to risk being hurt, in order to win. When a head-injury prevention video was developed for hockey players aged nine to ten, 22 of 34 minor-league coaches refused to show the video because they thought it would "make players think they will hurt other players on the ice" and "decrease competitive success in the game."

Recreational play is transformed into war-games where there is no gain without pain, preferably the other guy’s pain. More than one young athlete has been killed or permanently crippled by assaults committed in the course of "the game."

Crushing expectations combine with a lack of emotional support to create an inner despair that many men cannot communicate in words. Instead, they withdraw from intimate relationships, drink to excess, strike out in rage and kill themselves.

Much has been written about how the female role is profitable for capitalism. Women provide unpaid labor in the home to raise the next generation, and they are paid lower wages outside the home.

The male role also serves capitalism. Huge profits flow from shaming male workers to compete to produce more, to accept oppressive conditions ("only wimps complain"), and to serve as cannon fodder for imperial wars.